Undefeated and Off the List

Ever since my first visit to the US, I have felt that I should have US sports team that I support, just as I have an English and Scottish football team that I support. (Norwich City and Queen of the South respectively) I have yet to pick a team in any of the major US sports, but this weekend’s events emphatically ruled out one team. My wife’s family are originally from Boston and in the absence of an LA NFL team, they tend to support the New England Patriots. On Sunday the Pats completed the regular season undefeated, becoming only the second team to ever do so.

Clearly, I cannot support a team that actually wins anything; how would I cope supporting a team where victory was the norm and the good times outweighed the bad. Being a fan is about being long suffering and enduring failure, at least it is if you support Norwich City.

The New England Patriots are off my list, as are Boston’s baseball team who after a long period without a World Series win, took the crown in 2004 and 2007. The Chicago Cubs last won a world series in 1908, now that sounds like a suitable record of heartbreak.

POTUS

The 2008 Presidential Election seems to have been in full swing since the day after the 2004 Presidential Election. There have been full scale debates between the candidates seeking their party nominations since the middle of the year and incredible sums of money have been raised to pay for advertising. The election moves to the next phase on Thursday when the Iowa caucuses take place.

The purpose of caucuses and primaries is to allow voters on a state by state basis to select the person that they wish to see as the Presidential candidate for their parties. The actual election will be held in November 2008, with the winner taking office in January 2009. This is very different from the UK model, where a newly elected Prime Minister takes office the day after the general election.

The candidate for each party is actually selected by party conventions that will be held in the summer. However, most of the delegates at the convention are required to vote for the candidate that their state primary selected. The primary process is fairly new, states only started holding them in the early part of the twentieth century and they did not become generally binding until after the 1968 election. Before that time delegates were chosen by differing process and it was often not clear who would be selected as part candidate before the convention began; the eventual winner often emerging after many rounds of voting and discussions in smoke-filled rooms.

There is a detailed article on the role of the first caucus and primary that take place in the next week or so.